During a recent appearance on the Rich Roll podcast, Iron Maiden frontman Bruce Dickinson talked about the band’s commitment to independence and revealed whether or not the band had any plans to replace him when the frontman had throat cancer.
“When I had throat cancer [a decade ago], the last thing on my mind was, would I ever sing again? The first thing on my mind is, am I gonna get through this and be alive?,” Dickinson revealed. “And the last thing on my mind was would I ever sing again? And I thought, ‘Well, we’ll get to that stage when I’m done and we start trying to sing.’”
“And I was quite prepared to accept that I might not be able to sing with Iron Maiden again. I might be able to sing, I might be able to vocalize, I might be able to sing in a different way, but if I couldn’t sing the way I have to sing with Iron Maiden, I’ll help them find a great replacement. Because the music is sacrosanct,” he added.
Dickinson had previously shared with iNews that he decided to include details about his cancer battle in his autobiography, ‘What Does This Button Do?,’ to raise awareness about the condition.
In another interview, Dickinson stated that he was given ‘the all-clear’ by his specialists after undergoing an MRI scan following a course of chemotherapy and radiation treatment.
“I was amazed,” he shared. “My cancer was a 3.5-centimeter tumor in my throat and a 2.5-centimeter one in my lymph node, and that was the one that I could feel — that was the secondary one. But I did 33 sessions of radiation and nine weeks of chemo at the same time, which is fairly standard therapy for it. And it was gone. And I said to my oncologist: ‘What do you mean it’s gone? Where has it gone?’ And he said, ‘Well, your body just gets rid of it.’ A body is an amazing thing.”
Bruce’s latest solo album, The Mandrake Project, was released in March through BMG. In other news, Iron Maiden is set to play at Wells Fargo Center in Philadelphia tonight. The band’s ‘The Future Past’ tour ends on December 7 in Sao Paulo, Brazil. After that, Iron Maiden will start their ‘Run For Your Lives Tour’ on May 25 in Budapest, Hungary.